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- Use f1, not Escape.
-
Due to the limitations of the techniques used when communicating with a
terminal, it is not possible to "decide" that the user pressed the
Escape key for about a second after the actual key press
(see section EscapeTime). This means that you will experience annoying delays when
using menus. If you have no f1 key, redefine a keystroke assigning the
command
Escape
, and you will be able to use that keystroke instead of
Escape.
- Check for the presence of a Meta key.
-
If your system has a standard Meta or Alt key, there is a
good chance that you have several other shortcuts. If the built-in
Meta bindings do not work, you must discover which is the effect
of the Meta in your terminal emulator. Indeed, it is possible in
theory to configure about 150 shortcuts. See section Configuration.
ne
does tilda expansion.
-
When you have to specify a file name, you can always start with `~/' in
order to specify your home directory, or `~user/' to
specify the home directory of another user.
ne
does interactive filename completion.
-
When you have to specify a file name as last element of a long input,
you can invoke the completer using Tab. If you hit it twice in a
row, you will enter the file requester, where you can navigate and
escape back to the command line, either with f1, which will let
you edit again your previous input, or with Tab, which will copy
your current selection over your previous file name. In other words, you
can freely alternate completion, editing and browsing.
- The Escape delay when activating menus can be avoided.
-
If you press after Escape any key that does not produce the second
character of an escape sequence,
ne
will immediately recognize the
Escape key code as such. Since non-alphabetical keys have no effect while
browsing through the menus, if you're forced to use Escape as menu
activator you can press, for instance, `,' just after it to speed
up the menu activation (note that `:' would not work, because it would
activate the command line).
- Use turbo mode for lengthy operations.
-
Turbo mode (see section Turbo) allows performing very complex operations
without updating the screen until the operations are complete. This can
be a major plus if you are editing very long files, or if your terminal
is slow. If the default value (0, which means twice the number of
visible rows) does not give you the best results, experiment other
values.
- Regular expressions are powerful, and slow.
-
Regular expressions must be studied very carefully. If you spend a lot
of time doing editing, it is definitely reasonable to study even their most
esoteric features. Very complex editing actions can be performed by a single
find/replace using the
\n
convention. But remember always that
regular expressions are much slower than a normal search.
- Use the correct movement commands in a macro.
-
Many boring, repetitive editing actions can be performed in a breeze
by recording them the first time. Remember, however, that while recording
a complex macro you should always use a cursor movement that will apply
in a different context. For instance, if you are copying a word, you cannot
move with cursor keys, because that word at another application of the
macro could be of a different length. Rather, use the next/previous word
keys and the
MoveEOW
command, which guarantee a correct behaviour in
all situations.
- Some preferences can be preserved even with automatic preferences.
-
When you save an autoprefs file, the file simply contains a macro that,
when executed, produces the current configuration. However, you could want,
for instance, to never change the insert/overwrite state. In this case, just
edit the autoprefs files with
ne
and delete the line containing the
command setting the insert flag. When the autoprefs are loaded later, the
insert flag will be left untouched. This trick is particularly useful with
the StatusBar
and FastGUI
commands.
- If some keystrokes do not work, check for system-specific features.
-
Sometimes it can happen that a keystroke does not work--for instance,
Control-O does not open a file. This usually is due to the kernel
tracking that key for its purposes. For instance, along a
telnet
connection with xon/xoff flow control, Control-S and
Control-Q would block and release the output
instead of saving and quitting.
In these cases, if you do not need the system
feature you should check how to disable it: for instance, some BSD-like
systems feature a delayed suspend signal that is not in the POSIX
standard, and thus cannot be disabled by ne
. On HP-UX, the command
`stty dsusp ^-' would disable the signal, and would let the control
sequence previously assigned to it to run up to ne
.
Another example is the NCSA Telnet
software for the Macintosh. Unless
you modify your settings in such a way to disable Control-S and
Control-Q as flow controllers, you will not be able to use them
as keystrokes (even if ne
is doing all it can to explain to
the software that it does not need xon/xoff flow control...).
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